I’m sitting here on the floor of my living room watching Food Network’s new series “The Best Thing I Ever Ate”, which features FN stars talking about… you know. These men and women are so passionate about food: cooking it, eating it, describing what makes it delicious. This episode is all about deep fried food. Doughnuts, hot dogs, french fries, bacon, pork rinds. Nothing gourmet, absolutely guilty pleasures. But really celebrated and worthy of the calories because of the joy it brings to the customers’ lives.

I am a woman who has had an eating disorder for as long as I can remember, but realistically, absolutely more than half of my life. I have trouble classifying it because I, along with most other people in the world, are just beginning to acknowledge disordered eating that does not involve binging and purging or starvation. I graze, I binge, I sit around hating myself for the food I ate, the money I spent and the isolation I enforce on myself.

For all of the time I spend thinking about food and eating it, I barely ever enjoy it. I can’t even call the bad food that I eat “guilty pleasures” because the way I feel before, during and afterward is hardly pleasurable.

When I was younger, the first thing I ever wanted to be was a chef. I can’t remember ever helping out in the kitchen, or being a particularly daring eater, but at eight years old I knew I wanted to go to Cornell to be a culinary arts major. (I think I heard my dad say once that Cornell was a good school for aspiring chefs, so it’s an idea that I clung to blindly.) Today, I wonder why I wanted to cook in the future, but had no desire to practice it as a kid or teenager. Did I want to surround myself with food all day long? Or did I watch my parents (mostly Mom) cook dinner and make the meal special every single night until I went to college, and I wanted to continue the tradition of spending time with the people I love eating delicious food? Maybe I just met a chef when I was a kid and thought working in a restaurant would be fun. I honestly don’t know.

What I do know is that after 12 years of wasting calories and time on food that has done nothing for me except make me hate my body, I really want to learn how to cook. I want to spend the time on myself to create something simple and nutritional and satisfying. I don’t believe that diets work and I don’t want to restrict the kinds of food I eat. I just can’t continue to use food to avoid living and feeling the natural ups and downs of being an adult.

Now, when I cook for myself, I feel like I am wasting time because the result isn’t what I excepted and the meal is over much faster than it took to make it. I want to learn to enjoy the time I spend in the kitchen, appreciating myself as someone who doesn’t deserve to eat processed shit and garbage ingredients. I want it to be an activity that I will look foward to every day, because I know that it will encourage a turning point in how I feel about myself and what my life is all about. Let’s do this.

“It is unfortunate that individuals and other outside parties are trying to profit from material which is clearly private. I have had the privilege to speak to people across the country, both gay and straight, on a number of critical issues including safe sex. More important than the embarrassment of this incident is the misleading message these images send. I apologize and cannot emphasize enough the importance of responsible sexual practices.”

Dustin Lance Black is a good guy.

Lance Sandwich Crackers? I’ve never even heard of those and the commercial comes on now?

Am I part of a community trying to lose weight? Have I decided I’m ready to lose weight? I don’t need it anymore?

No wonder actresses are neurotic messes. People who have had fluctuating weight are sensitive to anyone noticing their body. Their job has become encouraging people to notice their body. I need privacy.

Is Giada De Laurentiis someone’s celebrity fantasy? Not that she doesn’t deserve to be, because I love her. But she doesn’t seem to be a heavy hitter on the tabloid scene.

Are there people who actually appreciate the time it took to compose this video? They find it worth seeing?

That mozzarella/raspberry jam/rosemary/brown sugar panini looks like the best thing you could ever put in your mouth.

Are there people out there who’s word processor dictionary recognizes all of the key terms of today’s entertainment-centric generation? They spend so much time writing about Kirsten Dunst’s every vaginal waxing that constantly seeing her name with a squiggly red line underneath it would send him round the psychotic bend. But of course, even writing this is tempting me to add Beyonce to my dictionary because the line is driving me nuts. And I want to have the accent automatically pop up!

I have had Fleet Foxes’ Blue Ridge Mountains in my head ALL DAY. Maybe hearing it will give me a little relief from the repetition.

Note to self: I should see Away We Go.

My goal for my life: For someone to think I have a genius mind. I don’t care; It could be my six year old daughter before she finds out I use Wikipedia to answer all of her questions. I should write a book about different heroes in peoples’ lives. What makes someone a hero? What makes someone a worshipper? I have to talk to Kendra about that.

I have a fully aged scar on my leg that I’ve never noticed before. Do I hate my body so much that I disregard its existence completely? Yes. For now. Not forever.

I could watch this over and over:

As my father so thoughtfully told me at the age of 12, I am such a fag hag.